NHS needs another £65bn by 2030-31, think tank says

The NHS in England will need to find another £65bn (€85bn; $98bn) by 2030-31 to balance the books, even if it maintains its current, higher than usual productivity gains, a new analysis from the think tank the Health Foundation shows.1

The gap could be closed if productivity gains rose to 2-3% a year and governments undertook to increase funding by 1.5% a year in real terms from 2014-15 onwards. But that would demand productivity improvements at a rate two to three times the long run average and funding to increase at more than twice the rate achieved in the current parliament.

NHS England said in its Five Year Forward View published in October that a total of £8bn of additional money was needed to sustain the existing pattern of services up to 2020-21, and the chancellor of the …